1. Field
The disclosed and claimed concept relates generally to handheld electronic devices that employ a text disambiguation function and, more particularly, to an improved method of enabling input on a handheld electronic device having a disambiguation function.
2. Description of the Related Art
Numerous types of handheld electronic devices are known. Examples of such handheld devices include, for instance, personal data assistants (PDAs), handheld computers, two-way pagers, cellular telephones, and the like. Many handheld electronic devices also feature wireless communication capability, although many such handheld devices are stand-alone devices that are functional without communication with other devices.
Such handheld electronic devices are generally intended to be portable, and thus are of a relatively compact configuration in which keys and other input structures often perform multiple functions under certain circumstances or may otherwise have multiple aspects or features assigned thereto. With advances in technology, handheld electronic devices are built to have progressively smaller form factors yet have progressively greater numbers of applications and features resident thereon. As a practical matter, the keys of a keypad can only be reduced to a certain small size before the keys become relatively unusable.
One way of providing numerous letters in a small space has been to provide a “reduced keyboard” in which multiple letters, symbols, and/or digits, and the like, are assigned to any given key. For example, a traditional touchtone telephone (FIG. 1) includes a reduced keypad which comprises twelve keys, of which ten have digits thereon, and of these ten keys, eight have letters assigned thereto. For instance, one of the keys includes the digit “2” as well as the letters “A”, “B”, and “C”. Other “reduced keyboards”, however, can be based on a QWERTY keyboard layout (FIG. 2). Accordingly, unlike the traditional touch-tone telephone keypad, in an exemplary reduced QWERTY keypad the key that is assigned the digit “2” may be assigned the letters “T” and “Y” as opposed to “A”, “B”, and “C”.
Despite the numerous advantages that a reduced QWERTY keypad provides over a traditional touch-tone telephone keypad, the reduced QWERTY keypad does have one shortcoming. This shortcoming relates to a given key's letter assignment, specifically, the letter assignment given to the keys associated with a digit (digit keys). For example, when a user calls an automated company directory using a touchtone telephone, the automated telephone system will typically ask the user to spell the name of the individual that the user would like to speak to by using the letters that are found on the traditional touchtone telephone keypad. Accordingly, if the user wanted to speak to an individual named “ALLIE”, the user would dial “25543” as the key sequence since on the traditional touchtone telephone keypad “25543” is the key sequence that spells the name “ALLIE” (see FIG. 1). The automated company directory would then recognize the Dual Tone Multi-Frequency signal (hereinafter, referred to as DTMF signal(s)) that is associated with the key sequence “25543” and would automatically connect the user to the dialed party. As stated above, however, the letters associated with the digit keys on a reduced QWERTY keypad do not correspond to the letters that are found on a traditional touchtone telephone keypad. In other words, the key sequence “25543” on a reduced QWERTY keypad does not spell the name “ALLIE”. Therefore, the user would be unable to use the letters that are printed on the keys of a reduced QWERTY keypad to enter the desired name into the automated company directory.